I started fumbling with his belt, the button and zipper that stood in the way of what I wanted, and he reached down to help me.
“I won’t come inside you,” he said against my mouth, and then he was pushing into me, and in that moment I didn’t give a fuck what he did as long as he stayed right where he was. It felt so good just to be filled with him, to be stretched around him, to know that we couldn’t get any closer than we were now. But then he gripped my leg, his fingers digging into my thigh, hitching me up to settle me even deeper on him, and I let out a moan.
“Hold on to me,” he said, just like he had at the beach.
I linked my hands around his neck, bunching my fingers in his T-shirt, vaguely marveling that I hadn’t even made himtake it off, that’s how fast things were moving. Meanwhile I could feel the door against my back, and it hurt a little as he pressed me against it, but in a good way, in a way where I wanted him to do it harder. I whispered the word in his ear, my nails digging into his shoulders as he thrust into me deeper, harder, faster, until I came again with a low, ragged cry.
“That’s it,” he said, almost soothingly. “That’s it.”
The orgasm had made me weightless, sinking even more against him, and he squeezed my ass as he repositioned me, giving a groan of his own at the friction where our bodies were still joined. He pinned me against the door as he thrust into me again and again, until he slid out of me with a bitten-off curse and came on the soft skin of my inner thigh. I watched him do it, his cock hard and pulsing, wet from being inside of me.
When it was all over, suddenly everything hit me in a flash. The sound of rain, still drumming down on the other side of the door. The echoes of our gasps and moans, the rattle of the doorknob as he’d fucked me harder. The fact that I was completely naked and he was still fully clothed, already putting himself back together. The way we’d lost that last bit of light through the window above the door, and it was now dark enough that when he looked at me his eyes were a glittering gray, no hint of their usual vibrant blue.
He leaned his forehead against mine. Both my feet were on the ground again, but he had his arm wrapped around my waist, partially supporting my weight.
“You promised,” he said.
I smiled when I remembered what he was referring to, myassurance that I wouldn’t feel sorry about this time the way I had after we’d hooked up in his car. “And I meant it.”
“Believe it or not,” he said. “I really was just trying to kiss you.”
“Sure you were,” I said. “That was a hell of a kiss.”
“All right,” he said, reaching up to squeeze my breast, rolling my nipple between his fingers until I felt another pulse to my clit, an aftershock from everything we’d done or the spark of something new. “I was hoping to feel you up a little, too. I’ll admit it.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t even get your shirt off.”
He grabbed the back of his collar, pulling his shirt over his head. He used it to wipe at the sticky wetness on my thigh, and I couldn’t help but smile.
“Bad habit,” I said, but I was grateful as he cleaned me up. I was also fascinated by all this sudden expanse of skin, the way I could touch his bare chest and shoulders and arms, the flex of the muscles in his back as he leaned over me, the ridged scar he had on one side. When he was done he pulled me in for one more kiss, and somehow I knew he mostly did it to feel my breasts flattened against his chest, because that’s what I wanted, too.
Eamonn reached around me to flick a light switch, then huffed a laugh against my cheek when nothing happened. “All this, and I forgot the electricity’s still out.”
That might explain why, now that I didn’t have the heat of the moment to warm me up, I realized it was a little chilly. I picked up Eamonn’s sweater off the floor and pulled it on over myself.
“I take it that’s not as easy to fix as a bad wire to a thermostat?”
“I exhausted the extent of my troubleshooting abilities,” he said. “Checked the breaker, checked to make sure I’d paid the bill. I was going to call an electrician to come take a look, but—”
He didn’t finish that sentence, but he didn’t have to. I could tell just from the expression on his face that at least part of that was because of me, that he probably would’ve done it yesterday afternoon except we’d been walking around Dublin together.
“They wouldn’t have come on a weekend anyway,” he said, as if he saw that I was feeling guilty and didn’t want me to. He took his phone out of his pocket to turn on the flashlight, then reached back for my hand, leading me up the stairs. “Let me show you my place.”
Thirty
Eamonn had to unlock thedoor at the top of the stairs, too, explaining that there was a side door that led from the shop into that entryway and so he just kept this one locked out of habit. He was talking a lot, telling me more than he needed to, and I wondered if he was nervous that I was about to step into his apartment, still a little keyed up from what we’d just done downstairs, or both.
I wanted to assure him that I understood that he hadn’t been expecting company, that I wouldn’t hold it against him if he had some dirty dishes in the sink or clothes on the floor or whatever. God knew the state of my own apartment wasn’t always perfect, and Mari was maybe the only person who could drop by unannounced whenever she wanted without me worrying that there might be a bra air-drying in the bathroom or a collection of candy wrappers on my nightstand.
But his apartment was fairly neat, from what I could seewhen I stepped in after him. It was dark, so I followed him into the kitchen while he rummaged in a cabinet until he came out with a few candles.
“Sorry,” he said, “we’ll have to do this like we’re in the eighteen hundreds. I should be able to get a fire going in a bit, though.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Really. I appreciate you letting me stay. Do you think…could I maybe use your shower?”
I’d been traipsing all over Ireland for the last couple days, so a shower sounded good anyway, but from the way he looked at me all I could think about was the way he’d come on my thigh a few minutes before.
“Of course,” he said. He grabbed the biggest of the three candles he’d lit, leading me down a narrow hallway toward the bathroom, where he automatically flicked the switch on the wall before giving me a rueful smile. “I can’t get it through my head for some reason. Do you think this will be enough light, if I set the candle here?”
